City of Dreams
Los Angeles, California which is also known as the City of Angels is a completely different universe that we all even me as a kid at one point fell into the trap of being awed by it. Even at the most unimaginable times, we were having an idyllic scenario drawn on our minds where we could be whatever we wished to be. Little kids from poor backgrounds would grab every opportunity they get to see the land of promise.
But what they are not aware of is how such dreams can totally be anemic by the exposure to the actual place that is America, and so could be their innocence of childhood. In the worst case scenario, they could be imprisoned. This is the violence that director Mohit Ramchandani has the courage to tackle. One of the film’s strongest points is how it places you in one of the most sordid parts of “the land of the free and the home of the brave” where people are willing to lose their sense of right and wrong for money and power.
City of Dreams picks up from real life events and follows the life of Jesús (Ari Lopez), who is brought into America with an apparent intention of playing as a soccer player. His story, however, takes a very disturbing twist when he discovers that he has been a victim of trafficking, only to end up working in place of a sweatshop where youths are made to work in dreadful conditions for 18 hours each day under threats of violence. The courageous Jesús is willing to do all it takes to emerge from the ruins in which he is trapped, but he may not be prepared for what it will really take to get there.
One of the most daring decisions taken by the filmmakers is that Jesús is kept mostly mute for a long duration of the film, isolating him even further due to the strong communication barrier. To support that concept, the word ‘jesus’ has been tattooed on the side of his hand like a barcode, and the character remains in bondage to the pain and anguish of his situation.
Such a minimal number of speaking lines makes things really difficult for Ari Lopez. Jesús begins the journey as a mute character yet with the ability to say more in a single frame than most people would in a thousand words. We are touched by the boy’s fate and the unbearable pain that he has to endure, we wish him out of this hell, and all those emotions, as we might guess, are triggered by the sincerity that was shining in his captivating eyes in every scene.
It’s only upon viewing the film that visually mute Jesús becomes apparent among several creative choices that I hadn’t anticipated, and perhaps too many such decisions were made to the extent that the film as such does not come together in terms of direction of a movie of such caliber.
There are moments when Ramchandani is rather careless with a dreamlike sensibility that of defining Jesús’s most important feature, ‘he is a dreamer.’ Look, in the first minute it is his imagination that basically takes him places; here we have a young boy who is playing in the mud with his tyres but sees himself in the soccer stadium where thousands get on their feet to cheer him and is even fantasizing how that would feel. He only wishes that the one thing that prevents him from enjoying his fantasies should be raised so that he may indulge in ‘sweat-shop slavery’. Upon laying shackles in a sweatshop, his fancy depictions of mother and borderline mystical renditions of visions transform into horror. Such sequences, when compared to the overall flow of the movie, are quite dissonant, additionally laden with xerox conditions of slow motion switching and metaphorical horror. However, such sequences are all not only clumsy and do not serve a very good purpose in a story that is scarier and far darker in its reality.
City of Dreams didn’t need to take as many overly dramatic liberties as it did.
The raw storytelling of the film is what keeps you engaged through this crucial storyline. When it gives that relevation, it’s terrible and hard to take in. It is a tribute to human greed, and the savagery that is innate in the world we find ourselves in.
Minute after minute, it becomes ever more clearer that this is not merely the story of one boy fighting back this is a money making scheme more. This is for every child, every victim of this tyranny, and every child, including the system that is supposed to prevent this outrage from such modules gross dysfunctionality. This decay of capitalism makes everyone who wants a share in these operations a casualty and this is brought out subtly more than once as we appreciate the history of each character’s struggles and purpose including the superiors of Jesus. In terms of the direction, it could be said that this is the result of either inexperience or self-indulgence by the director but this is all mostly swamped by the necessity for the film to be made. The important thing to keep in mind when it comes to the period drama in question is what kind of bill it has when one looks at the elements of it. Mohit Ramchandani and Ari Lopez have coalesced to provide a most ghastly agonizing long call about the emotionless stupefying modern slavery that as difficult as it is to look at, it, however, should be.
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